2014-09-10

Time has been flying! I didn’t find the time to write a summary about the best three months of my life. It was too much things to handle before leaving. I also wanted distance to my adventure so I could catch a better view. This three months has been extremely exciting. I have never felt this free and alive before. It’s incredible what you actually can do if you really, really want it!

Below you can read about my journey three best parts, and what I valued the most:

Work, I’ve got a brighter understanding how to use my new methods and tools in different situations. It’s quite fascinating that you can be aware of your own actions and your own behavior. How you can analyze and build up yourself and also focus on what you think is most important. I was often asking my supervisor about personal feedback in different situations. Because sometimes you can be quite hard on yourself and only see the “bad things” you do and forget about the good once. Of course it can also be in the opposite way, then it’s even harder to develop yourself in personal actions, because you have to be a bit critical to actually manage.

The most powerful lesson I had during this trip has been; how to handle people in different situations in the business world and also people around it. If you think about it, It’s stuff that you have to go through. You have to experience it to understand how you will act in all these new situations that you put yourself through every day. there is no book that will tell you how you will act…

What about the business itself? Yeah, I learned how to check production, how to put meetings, how to source material for our customers etc. Of course I put together everything I learned from school and previous experience together with my new once to get a greater use for better result at work.

When you learned the basics of your main routines you’re starting to realize that it’s not that easy as you thought. Because every situation with maybe different people in different mood can, or will, change your whole agenda. One day does not look like the other.

So this has been a very good experiment on myself because I am a person who love to plan my day. I love when things goes smooth. I love to have control. So, This job has been the opposite of what I’m use to. At first I was frustrated and not really satisfied because I couldn’t really change my schedule in a smooth way. After maybe 6 weeks I figured out that it was actually me who had to change my way of thinking. Always cary a back up plan with me and practice on “quick-solution-thinking”.

My collection for my future brand. Between meetings and during my free days I have been seeking after the right trimmings and fabric for my garments. I have to say; people who works with textile and trimmings they are such nice people. It’s a pleasure to work and be in this world of textile!

I started to sketch up what I had in mind, i’m always quite sure about what I want to make. So I was sketching then I made patterns (size 36) and after that I did my prototypes with white cotton wave. And I drew sharp lines so I could easily see how the garment is shaped to the body. Normally you make prototypes in size medium to grade your sizes afterwards. But I will no grade them, that’s why.

When I made my prototypes I started to make the real patterns including lining so I could easily calculate fabric consumption per garment.

After these steps I kind of new how much fabric I needed each garment and my fabric and trimming hunt started!

It has been a little bit tricky because most fabric supplier don’t want to sell under 100 meters. I only wanted ten m/fabric, so they were laughing a bit, but after a few negative answers I found another way to express my needs and they also changed their behavior towards me. I found what I was searching for an a lot more!

I also got my hang tags and neck labels to a factory that could help me. So I’m enormously pleased with my effort of my own dream.

My new friends, who are full of energy and love! I feel so lucky to have been surrounded by their kindness and craziness. It has been so manny nights that I never wanted to end.

Facebook had this amazing site ”svenskar i Istanbul” (English = Swedes in Istanbul) where you can join and see what’s happening in the city. You can also write by yourself and suggest events. I new some people from Istanbul since before and they also led me into new friendships. There is also coffee shops that swedish people owns and you can easily find swedes there. After a while you get friends from all over the world and you will get this amazing feeling that you just wanna stay in this world forever.

I hope I did manage to give you some advice and knowledge about my work. If you want to ask questions feel free to catch me at school or e-mail. If you didn’t follow, the blog posts before, I study at the swedish school of textile in Borås, Textile Product Development and Entrepreneurship, second year.

2014-07-16

This is a very hectic and important day for the factory and J.Lu-products. Everything must fall into place, otherwise a fast sullotion has to be done. And its even more tougher this time because the Ramadan is running. You get the feeling that everyone works under pressure and everyone is stressed, hungry and thirsty.

We start with an early meeting at the factory. We decide which articles should be checked through, how manny pieces of all styles in every size. We pick out in general 10 per cent of the gods. It depends on how big the order is of course. If you’re gonna make one of these check ups you can see how manny you have to check according to a list that you can find on this web site below.

www.intertek.com.

So, what we will check is; measures, fitting, embroideries, symmetry, placement of prints. You also want to see the size, article number, color, name of style, because it has o match the care label and the items poly bags label. Likewise you check what kind of defects they had before. I mean, if they had problems with, for example the buttons, Let’s say they are too lose. Then you should check it more specific, just to be sure they’re not.

You have to check that the number of garments match the entire order. In general there is a rule that you can ship 5% above or below the amount of what your client ordered, if nothing else has decided.

At the end, check the boxes, so it looks good. It’s really bad if they’re broken during the transport. Also check the letters on the boxes according to the content, to make sure they are packed as they should be.

On this webpage you can find good information in general about quality inspections.

http://www.fangsi.se/web/quality.aspx

I didn’t tell you about the earlier stage in this ”inspection-line” there is of course more than one inspection of every style. You make inspections before production, during production and the final inspection that you make after production (like in this stage, as i talked about now).

2014-07-01

Today i’m gonna show you some good things to know f you want to produce clothes together with factories. You must be clear through the whole process, This is the most important thing. As soon as you have a slightest thought that"this seam or this placement of print" can be a problem, you make it even more clear! This will save you time, energy and money. Because if not even you, who designed the garment, think it’s clear enough, what will the factories think? Sometimes people believe it’s embarrassing to ask questions. So even if you think, this will end up good, it can turn up the opposite way.

I have been working a lot with illustrator the end of last week and beginning of this week. It takes a bit time to learn. I was lucky that I have been practicing before. Drawings is absolutely the best way to communicate with! If you are a fast illustrator-drawer it will become easy for you to handle the communication with factories employes. And this will end up with less problems.

First we got to have a sort of system to deal with. I have been on production inspections manny times, I sort of have a clue on what’s important in a measurement list or not. I’m not gonna show you the whole list but, I try to make it simple so you know where i’m heading.

As I said, it doesn’t end at “B5” but The list is long.. Ok, these are my measure and I’m going to produce a “cap sleeve tee”. If you want to, you can take a picture of a sweater which is similar to the look you want. And you put it as a sheet in illustrator, lock it, create new layers and use it as a template during your drawing. I am not going to explain how you will make the drawing in Illustrator but I can suggest you, who is interested of course, to watch youtube tutorials, write down if you find something useful and just be patient.

This is my way to illustrate a garment for production. The arrows is showing you how to measure the garment. In witch direction, where to start and where to begin. The letter together with the number will show you the name of measure and length of measure.

As you can see, every measure that you need is on this list for this garment. This is a very simple sheet, but it’s good to have something that puts everything together.

Also you need to give information about your garment when it comes to: type of fabric, type of lining, color, trimmings, neck label, care label, hangtags, sticker on hang tag, packing instructions and what kind of samples you would like to receive and in witch size.

Yeah! it’s a lot of things to deal with in this profession. You have to learn a bit of everything! And that is what I love about it!

This measurement list is made for this brand bohemeus. I have to say i’m glad and proud to work for this brand during this summer. Please visit their web page: http://www.bohemeus.com and also their Instagram as: bohemeus, and you will totally see what I mean! Enjoy folks!

2014-06-24

Today I will show you how this Jersey factory works! As I said before, every factory has its own speciality.

Let us start with pattern making in this room, for today children apparels.

When they’re done with the pattern, they print it out with this big printing machine.

Afterwards the pattern goes to this room where they make proto-samples for customers. They both cut and sew in this room. The customer will get their first sample where they can put comments about the fitting and shape like;

The armhole is too big, the sleeve length is too short, sleeve cuffs are too thick etc. To achieve the request and perfect fitting.

On this floor they also measure fabrics weight, check colors hue and of course they are washing garments to see how well they can handle the temperature and if there will be any color bleeding on other materials. They want to ensure that the quality of the fabric is good, we call it a “Washing resistance ability test”

When the customer approves the proto-sample the factory starts to spread the fabric on the table in layers, how many layers depends on how manny pieces they will produce and how many pieces/size.

Then they cut it! In this case they cut out pieces for a pair of sweatpants using a mechanical cutting machine. All data comes from the pattern making department, upstairs, to this machine. In this case it takes 20 minutes to cut this order, manually it takes around 1,5 h. What you might not know is that the machine will cut much finer curves if it’s on lower speed than high.

This machine has a vacuum function. It makes it much easier for the machine to cut it if it’s really hard packed. Videos will come later..

When it comes to striped fabric they often do it in this way. Cut shorter lengths according to the size of the garments pattern. In this way it’s more manageable for them to fit the colored stripes on each other, because jersey fabric moves easily.

After cutting they’ll mark the pieces by a “made-up-number”, In this case it’s a shirt and all the pieces will wear the number ”23” as an example.

Then they’ll bundle the pieces together according to what kind of piece it is, like;

(sleeve) small

(collar) small

(sleeve) medium

(collar) medium etc…

Then it’s time for SEWING! (it’s really noisy down here)

In this room they are checking all the garments. They are cutting leftover threads, iron them, fold them, place hang tags, put them in plastic cases, then sort them in boxes according to customers orders.

These small labels belongs to a system they use and I think it’s fun to be aware of these small things that you might not think of as important.

"Control 1” describes the worker who made ​​the check-up on this garment.

”TAMIR” means, there is a fixable mistake on this garment

”DEFOLU” means, there is an unfixable mistake on this garment.

It put preassure on the controller, which is good. because if there is many repeatable mistakes from the same controller, you can easily take contact with this controller and find out the reason.

2014-06-15

This Friday we had a meeting with customers inside an outstanding print factory. And to be clear, this company is something extraordinary. The meeting starts with an introduction about the company and what they can offer us as customers. They have around 6000 different print designs to choose between. All artwork are strictly original and they are designed by their own design team or independent design studios. They are helping brands to keep ahead of trends and of course they will give some inspiration.

Our client is going through manny of the printed samples, which is a lot I must say but it has to be done. All samples has a shape of a dress or some kind of top , as the pic above. (which is totally awesome, cause you’ll see the printed fabric in a different way. it helps you a lot.) Some of the prints can only go through digital printing and other has to be Rotary screen printed. But if you want to rotary screen print an item which hanging as a digital print, you can, but you can not do vice versa. But you have to really consider the prices, cause digital printing, in this case, is 40 % more expensive than the other choice. This is how this factory works. Factory’s they differ quite a lot in this business, you have to ask so you know what your dealing with during the process.

In this case our client pay by full price to the factory which stands for cutting and sewing. It means that the “cutting and sewing place” pays for the printed fabric that we are choosing in this room. The “cutting and sewing place” is the last to give the final price to j.lu-Products and we will give our final price to our client. If the client will buy the fabric bye themselves it could be risky. If something bad happened to the fabric, the factory’s often blame each others.

When she picked out which samples she wants, the print factory checks if there are samples that have been used by others. Our klient checks those samples and sees if it’s just a stripe or if it’s a actual pattern. If it’s something regular, she keeps it. If not, she choose not to keep it. Everything depends on what kind of brand that used it. If they will sell it in the same area etc.

Here you’ve got a pic of samples from ground materials. Our client are searching prints and fabrics for more than one collection so that’s why we’re in this jungle! They want different kind of materials to different kind of clothes. I’m not sure if they know what kind of material they actually want for the different collections they have in mind. some of the prints and ground material will be used and others will not. It’s just samples so they decide when they know what they want.

2014-06-11

Yesterday, our freelancer-quality-controller and I went to a factory that produced knitted apparel for us. It’s the first time, during this trip, that I was going all alone with a person who only speaks turkish. I can tell you, that is the most effective way to learn a language. You have to communicate in a simple way with your body language, and of course, the dictionary will become your best friend. Put on a smile and you’re halfway!

During the meeting we talked about the knitted apparel and their problems. How they solved the problems, new dates of delivery and so on. Luckily there were problems that could be fixed very fast. In this business you can not expect that one day will be like the other and that everything will go as you planned. You have to be flexible, a fast-thinker and a fast-solver. I can tell you that these three qualities are not really my aces. So I’m very grateful that I have this opportunity to get involved in these situations because this is something that you must experience.

After the meeting I asked if they could show me the knitting machines and they did it with joy!

It’s a small factory but they know what they’re doing! Here is the knitting machines. They knit body (as back and front), sleeves and collar.

So, this is a closer view of the machine. If you have been doing hand-knitting before you know how to hold the sticks. It’s the same procedure with these two blocks with “needles” on both sides.

When they have produced all the pieces they have to join them. They are using this kind of machine, “The linking machine”. I have never seen this type of machine before, first time for everything, right! I have to say; it’s so got damn beautiful!

Ok, You see there is a lot of pointed “needles” in a circle, They have to put one “needle” in every single loop. Otherwise the whole thread will go. And they are doing this on the two pieces that will join each other. The circular point ring will rotate as the pedal is pressed down.

Now all pieces turned into a garment, in this case a pull-over. They have to iron and steam it to get it in great shape. They use needles as markers on the “steam-table” so they keep the measure according to customers request.